Posted here is a downloadable Word file comprised of transcripts of newspaper articles about the so called Pocasset murder of Edith Burgess Freeman by her father, Charles F. Freeman, on Cape Cod in 1879.

The murder was widely covered nationwide. Selected articles about the case have been transcribed here. It should be noted that many newspapers copied accounts that had been published elsewhere.

My thanks to Stephen Best for copying me on key articles on the Pocasset murder: Indianapolis News, May 6, 1879 and a series of articles that appeared sequentially in the Falmouth (MA) Enterprise on June 8, July 12, July 15, and July 19, 1938. These key articles follow immediately in the attached document. Other articles transcribed by Roger W. Smith are included on following pages; these articles were contemporaneous with the case (with the exception of one retrospective article published in 1885) and are ordered chronologically.

There were some other names which, when I saw them, reminded me of people I knew but had forgotten about: Martha Chickering, Herb Weeks, Chandler Newton, Rick Corley, Jane Urich, Lorna Laughland, Rev. Carl Scovel, Wally Fletcher, and Jean Nichols.

The May 1963 fed newsletter had a story based on a supposed popularity poll. The headline read, “ROGER SMITH VOTED MOST IMMORAL BOY IN FED!” John Coffee cooked this up and took great delight in his joke. The joke was that I was regarded as such a straight arrow. See:

The November 1963 fed newsletter contained a review of a made up book, Pest Control in the Pripit Marshes, signed “J.C.” I was at John [Coffee’s] apartment with other LRY’ers who were visiting when he wrote this piece. Maybe you remember this.

In another issue, there is a plug for the book Growing Up Absurd by Paul Goodman. I actually got to meet Goodman a few years later in New York when I was hired to house sit in his apartment for a few days and walk his dogs while he was traveling. I was performing alternative service as a CO then.

In the above referenced article re pedestrian traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, New York Times reporter Winnie Hu notes:

New York City has commissioned a $370,000 engineering study of the bridge’s walking and biking promenade to address crowding.

An unnecessary study and a waste of money.

The Brooklyn Bridge promenade is very crowded. As noted in the article, the pedestrian walkway is thronged with walkers, including lots of tourists, who (along with the locals), besides walking, often at leisurely pace, are often loitering to take in the view, fraternize, take photos, and so forth. Aggressive bikers on what is supposed to be a separate pathway are often ringing their bells or shouting for pedestrians to get out of the way.

Sound chaotic and unruly? Indeed, it is. But this is not a problem, nor is it a cause for alarm, in my opinion. It’s actually kind of fun. The fact that the bridge is thronged with cheerful pedestrians — besides its aesthetic appeal and “walker friendly” construction (the boardwalk, which is raised above the traffic lanes; the benches) — is what make walking over the Brooklyn Bridge such fun.

Cities are crowded places by definition. Don’t like it? There are smaller cities, exurbs, suburbs, small towns, and so forth where, I would imagine, one can find uncrowded streets and thoroughfares to walk on.

To get back to the stampede on the Brooklyn Bridge that the Times reporter describes (accurately): I like it — I should say, LOVE it. I am not alone among walking enthusiasts who love the experience of walking across the bridge.

If one wants seclusion or a place to walk without hardly anyone else around — in the City, that is — such places can be found. Central Park, believe it or not, often feels uncrowded — in some spots is virtually empty — during many times: weekdays, for example.

I frequent a park in Queens that is one of the most beautiful in the City. It is in a residential neighborhood, is quiet, and is almost always uncrowded. Not just uncrowded, but practically empty. (And, yet it is not a scary place to be in; on the contrary, it feels safe and always has a core of dog walkers and neighborhood residents.)

I frequently walk across the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan and back because is it is the shortest route for me to walk to Manhattan. The Queensboro Bridge is not a scenic or fun walkway. There are no good views. There is no boardwalk. There are no benches. There are few pedestrians. Sometimes, I don’t care. I am lost in my own thoughts. But, on “aesthetic” and “experiential” grounds — as a walker who loves walking for its own sake — I prefer the Brooklyn Bridge by far. It’s no contest. And, I like the crowds. One gets such good vibes from them. Everyone seems cheerful and friendly.

A final point: pedestrian crowding on the Brooklyn Bridge is a seasonal thing. The bridge is thronged with pedestrians mainly on the nicest days and during the warmest times of the year. At other times, it is less crowded. Not that crowding during the good weather is a problem. It’s anything but, in my opinion, as I have argued above.

Depend upon it. The “traffic engineers,” pedestrian traffic engineers, besides pocketing a hefty fee, will mess things up. They will make the experience of walking the bridge worse at the minimum — whatever “solution” they come up with to address the “problem” of pedestrian overcrowding — and could ruin it.

The boardwalk has been there since the bridge was originally opened in 1883. Leave it alone!

I copied a friend of mine on this article. He emailed me back as follows:

Roger — yes I saw this exciting piece. What amazes me is that this planet is described as relatively close but is in fact a trillion miles away or so.

Scott

I replied to my friend as follows:

Scott,

A couple of things:

Kenneth Chang, the NY Times’s lead science writer is excellent.

They used to have some boring ones (science writers) years ago.

I am woefully uninformed and poorly educated in science, but I find this sort of stuff fascinating.

To get to the planet Proxima b, traveling at incredibly fast speeds, would take something like a hundred (or is it fifty?) years.

Given its distance from us in light years, it would take around four and a half years merely for a signal or electronic message sent from there to reach us (and vice versa).

Another thing (or two):

We know that life on earth originated from a “primordial soup” … there were four basic elements present that made life possible.

It seems certain that life could originate elsewhere.

Planets that could be habitable keep being discovered orbiting other stars … this is only beginning because of powerful telescopes that we didn’t have before which are orbital.

It seems to me now — considering the arc of discovery, as it were — that there is no question whatsoever that there is life on other planets — there are so many stars in the universe, including the zillions with planets orbiting them, it boggles the mind.

Of course there are! I would be inclined to say — definitely, inarguably. There are habitable planets out there with a form of life. We just haven’t reached or contacted them.

“Extreme vetting” of immigrants? Does that mean water-boarding? I think we should extreme vet any orange-faced lard-ass and those related to him who travel outside the country to Russia and Ukraine, and Scotland for golfing; water-boarding before let back in to see if they can recite the preamble to the constitution, the Articles of Confederation and explain the difference between The Constitution and the Bill of Rights and explain all of the amendments to the Constitution and why each came to be … yeah, yeah, turn ’em upside down, pour water down their gullet till they drown. Don’t let ’em back in until they can demonstrate understanding of our founding principles. While we’re at it, maybe we oughta extreme vet every human on the planet, to be sure they are actually human beings, and not aliens, or “other-worldly”, Satan spawn type entities that are infiltrating our republic and taking over the country from within. What dreams have become.

a respondent: Vet them, why not?

Liz Tighe: Vet, yes. but he didn’t say “vet”, he said “EXTREME vetting, I mean EX-TREME!” he added with great emphasis … define. Actually, if water-boarding was only considered an ‘enhanced’ method of obtaining information, what is meant by “extreme” vetting? What is the vetting now, how does it vary by country of origin and what would it mean for vetting to be “extreme”? Does anyone actually know? It’s the responsibility of citizens to know what it is they’re voting for. policy positions not appeals to fear and ignorance.

respondent: I would never wish this but, maybe the only way you would see it different is if your family member had died in marathon bombing or was raped sodomized and head cut off in Benghazi . It seems you disconnect from those evils! Salaries it different cause he lives in a world

Where his people die!

Roger W. Smith: Just because terrible things happen in the world, one doesn’t go about picking on large classes of people who were not involved to exact revenge and impose what might be called “collective punishment,” striking out blindly and trampling on our rights as citizens, which were not won or granted easily.

*****************************************

N.B. – Liz Tighe is the daughter of Robert W. Tighe, my former English teacher.

My jaw dropped when I read that Donald Trump stated that the Orlando and San Bernardino mass attacks were carried out by “immigrants, or the children of immigrants.” I am the child of an immigrant. My father came here after being in a slave labor camp in Siberia, having fled the Nazis in World War II.

My family and I live in a very diverse town of immigrants. Amazingly, there isn’t a terrorist in the whole bunch of us.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump did not mention homegrown terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, or Dylan Roof, the Charleston church shooter. Instead of worrying about immigrants, I would like to know how Mr. Trump plans to deal with the problem of white men, or the children of white men.

Yesterday was a beautiful late summer day. Central Park was uncrowded, quiet, and peaceful. Whole parts of it were virtually empty. It’s hard to believe that you are in the midst of Manhattan, cheek by jowl with some of the priciest neighborhoods.

Such an urban space could never be created today; the real estate developers would never allow it. But, then, no one can touch Central Park (though the developers would love to).

It’s sacrosanct, thank God.

— Roger W. Smith

September 14, 2016

footnote: Central Park was established in 1857 on 778 acres of city owned land in part of Manhattan that was at that time undeveloped.